Adios WKRP -- Internet Radio Moves Upstream.ST. LOUIS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 29, 1999-- In the last few years, new Internet See Web 2.0 and Internet2. radio stations, which aren't limited to the broadcasting locale (programming) locale - A geopolitical place or area, especially in the context of configuring an operating system or application program with its character sets, date and time formats, currency formats etc. Locales are significant for internationalisation and localisation. , have been popping up all over the Web. Most of them have been small, hard-to-find, low-budget sites, but even with their inaccessibility in·ac·ces·si·ble adj. Not accessible; remote or unapproachable. in  ac·ces , they managed to attract an audience and put some fear into traditional radio station operators. Now there's a second offensive -- led by companies like GlobalStreams.com -- that promises to take the Internet one step closer to dominating the radio waves Radio wavesElectromagnetic energy of the frequency range corresponding to that used in radio communications, usually 10,000 cycles per second to 300 billion cycles per second. . GlobalStreams.com began with three young guys from St. Louis who were fascinated by Internet radio Listening to audio broadcasts via the Internet. There are more than 4,000 broadcasts available on the Internet that can be streamed and played by a software media player in the computer or in a stand-alone Internet radio with the software built in. and recognized its huge potential. "We started to realize that there was a lot of cool stuff to listen to on the Internet from all over the world," says Bill Davis For the artist, animator, creative director, see . For the baseball player, see .
"The problem was that these sites were all over the place. They were tough to find and access, and once you did access a site, you had to click through a million different channels. It was too hard to actually get to listening to the stream. We thought it would be cool to cut through all the clutter for people and build a hub where it would be easy to search for, find and listen to whatever radio you wanted." "Streaming," explains Davis, "was picked up in the last couple of years as a catch phrase for the delivery of entertainment or content other than text over the Internet." But these streams weren't flowing into one ocean. Davis and his co-founders decided to provide that ocean with GlobalStreams.com, which launched last month and acts as a hub for the huge network of radio stations they've brought together. With about 2,500 different stations in the database, there are about 90 different city-specific sites throughout the world (for example, AtlantaStreams.com or HongKongStreams.com), each of which can be accessed through GlobalStreams.com or typed directly into a browser browser Software that allows a computer user to find and view information on the Internet. The first text-based browser for the World Wide Web became available in 1991; Web use expanded rapidly after the release in 1993 of a browser called Mosaic, which used . GlobalStreams.com is designed to be as user-friendly as possible. "We want the site to be easy enough for anyone. I want my mom to be able to use this," Davis says. The home page displays a selection of stations accompanied by a listening icon, which offers instant access to music. The stations are also accessible by genre and keyword. Other search features on the site include CitiStreams.com (which finds stations by city), CollegeStreams.com (which searches college stations), ArtistStreams.com (which includes a few artist-specific streams) and NetStreams.com (which accesses Internet-only stations). Davis says that Net stations have an advantage over traditional radio because they don't face the same commercial pressures. "Nine times out of ten they're so much better and cooler than traditional radio," he says. "The money that these Internet-only folks do have all goes into building quality programming. So there's so much cool stuff out there." The company is currently building a digital store, which is scheduled to go live on November 1, where users will be able to purchase music and download To receive a file transmitted over a network. In any communications session, "download" means receive, and "upload" means send. The download/upload often implies a big/little scenario, in which data is being downloaded from the "big" server into the "little" user's computer. songs for free. Perhaps GlobalStreams' most prominent feature is MyStreams.com, which allows users to easily program their own radio dial with their favorite stations and take it anywhere on the Net. "You can come to the site, grab your dial, and then there's a little 'MyStreams to go' function that you just click, and it launches your radio dial window," Davis says. "Then you can go anywhere else on the Internet. We'd like you to stay on our site, but we also realize that people are busy and are trying to get things done." GlobalStreams.com plans to help realize the profit potential of Internet radio stations by expanding the audio advertising markets, so if you're hoping for commercial-free radio, you'd better listen now and enjoy it while it lasts. Davis is convinced that Internet radio is changing the face of radio broadcasting The examples and perspective in this article or section may not represent a worldwide view of the subject. Please [ improve this article] or discuss the issue on the talk page. , and sooner or later all local stations will have to get online. Thousands of them already are. "If they're not on now, they're going to be, or else they're going to be done," says Davis. This should benefit consumers because the changes have only created more choice. "Before, local radio stations had a monopoly on the eardrums of listeners. It was strictly a function of where you were. All of a sudden their strangle hold Stran´gle hold 1. (Wrestling) a hold by which one's opponent is choked. It is usually not allowed. 2. a forceful influence that strongly inhibits freedom of action; as, the oil price jump put a stranglehold on the economy s>. on the local listeners is completely gone. So yeah, traditional radio is dying, and its all for the better of the consumer." ABOUT GLOBALSTREAMS.COM GlobalStreams.com is a privately held company privately held company A firm whose shares are held within a relatively small circle of owners and are not traded publicly. based in St. Louis, MO. ABOUT ROUZE.COM Rouze.com is a privately held company based in San Francisco San Francisco (săn frănsĭs`kō), city (1990 pop. 723,959), coextensive with San Francisco co., W Calif., on the tip of a peninsula between the Pacific Ocean and San Francisco Bay, which are connected by the strait known as the Golden , CA. |
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